The Healing Arts
by A.A. Pessimal
Summary: On the Pellenor Fields, a vampire is near death. On the Discworld, a vampire deprived of her coffee fix is having "flashsides". the Last Detail's medic, Igorina, gets caught betwen two vampires. LOTR meets Pratchett's Discworld. Monstrouous Regiment


_**The Healing Arts…**_

_(A Fanfic set, at least partially, inside the "Monstrous Regiment" continuum. It crosses to a surprising but entirely logical place…)_

The battle surged and flowed across the Pellenor Fields. With heroic Rohan, ever a faithful friend of Minas Tirith, having swept into the Enemy's flank, and with great number of men having disembarked from ships captured somehow from the Enemy, the defeat of the Dark Lord's horde was assured. Heartened by the fall of the Nazgul that had been witnessed by all, the armies of Gondor and her allies swept on, driving the fell foe before them.

But there were those of the fell foe who would sell their lives dear. Vonmurvi, one of the last of her kind, vampire sorceress of Mordor and of the dread family of Sauron himself, screamed, knowing her death to be assured. If not at the hands of Gondor, then because of the sacred Dark being whipped away by the accursed West Wind, taking away her protection from the thrice-cursed Boat of the Sun, in whose rays she would perish. She flitted from shadow to shadow, seeking shelter in the rapid-ebbing Dark, trying to jump closer with every leap to the ruined city of Ithilien and possible sanctuary in a dark corner till nightfall. Above all, she wondered about this strange and terrible craving she was experiencing, for some drug or fell potion or spirituous essence called _cor-fee_. She could almost smell and taste it.

Fear grew within her, augmenting the anger and the frustration she felt at being deprived of victory. She leapt at a group of Gondorian human insects who were trying to bring her down with long spears. They fell back at her screaming onslaught, leaving one writhing in her claws.

Feeling the pulse pounding in her head, she raised the unresisting human to her jaws and prepared to bite his life out…

_Thwokka-wokka-wokka…._

Igorina surreptitiously checked that the hammer and sharpened stakes were accessible, and edged closer to Maledict, who yet again had been deprived of coffee for over six days. Polly, Tonker and Shufti had gone on a foraging mission to raid the enemy and see what they could steal in the ground-beans or instant powder line: but if they didn't come back soon, there would be an out-of-control rogue vampire to deal with.

By the look of it, Mal was deep into flashsides country again, her tense vibrating body making her look slightly out of focus, and her eyes somewhere else, locked in the thousand-yard stare. Igorina sighed: the decision had to be hers. She reached for a stake and the mallet, reasoning that the heart could be reached just as easily through the back as the front. With luck, Mal wouldn't feel a thing, and they could preserve her ashes for reconstitution later, once coffee was available. They'd done this before: all the girls in the Detail had insisted on each adding a drop of her own blood to the mix that resuscitated Mal.

"Do it!" Maladict insisted, through gritted teeth. "_Now!_"

Igorina lunged. She hardly heard Polly's voice in the background shouting "Wait! We got coffee!".

This was because the moment she got within three feet of the vampire, the world changed… in her last conscious moment, Igorina realised she'd fallen into whatever Flashsides the vampire was experiencing.

All the detail saw was a green flash, and Igorina was gone.

_Thwokka-thwokka-thwokka….._

Baldwin Watkins, soldier of Gondor, had fainted at the nightmare that confronted him. He hoped his death at the hands of this thing of Mordor would be quick and clean. He barely saw the vampire Vonmurvi stiffen in perplexed surprise as the wooden stake emerged from the front of her chest, dripping her heart's blood. As the six thousand year old horror crumbled to dust and dropped him sprawling to the Pellenor, he was sure he heard the word "_released…_" coming from her foul lips. From behind where the vampire had stood, a figure emerged, replacing a mallet inside the folds of her tunic. Short, taking the form of a comely wench, but sadly marred by scars, she took in her surroundings and said

"Thith ithn't Borogravia, I thuppose? Nor ith it Zlobenia. Could you tell me where we are, pleathe?"

"You slew the horror. We should bow down to you!" said the Gondorian captain. Igorina shrugged and looked down.

"Oh, a rogue vampire. I thee one every day!"

She leapt forward and took a wounded Gondorian soldier by the arm, steering him away from the vampire's ruins..

"Whatever you do, don't bleed over it. Or you're back to thqwuare one! Now let'th have a look at that arm."

Captain Turin took her on the strength as company healer for the rest of the day, charging his men to guard such a Valar-touched one with their very lives. At battle's end he sent her under escort to the City to seek the Houses of Healing where he talents would be needed.

"What do you mean, gone!" Polly Perkins demanded.

Maladict took another grateful glugging swig of her coffee.

"Just…gone, Pol. I was flashsiding to some weird battle that involved men and vampires and trolls and ugly little goblins called…. Erics, or something…. Outside this weird city, all white and built onto a mountain. I was just about to rip some poor mark's throat out, and then all of a sudden Igorina comes charging me from behind. Then the…connection… broke, and you put this cup of coffee in my hand, and Igorina just isn't here any more!"

"Well, we're not going without her!" Polly declared. "Is there a chance, do you think, that she'll spontaneously sort of come back?"

"Its been known" Mal shrugged. "Humans or dwarfs who've been caught up in a flashside have been sent somewhere else. We think, or the best vampire minds think, that a vampire in enough distress to be suffering from flashsides sets up a link to another world, a parallel dimension. If somebody who rightly belongs on the Disc gets caught up in it, they might stay for a length of time, but sooner or later the host world realizes it's got an alien body that doesn't belong and sends it back. As if it's got elastic tied to it."

"And how long does this last?"

"ooh… up to thirty forty, years. I'm not helping, am I?"

"Ok, people, dig in. We can afford to stay here for another day or two. It won't hurt to wait and see." decided Polly.

_And it was afterward said in Minas Tirith that the King who had returned would not enter the City, for fear of being perceived to challenge the authority of Steward Denethor, and was content to camp outside on the Pellenor Fields with his knights, the Dunedain of the North. _

_Yet he was prevailed upon to go to those wounded and bereft by the siege and the battle and perform works of healing, for, as all know, the hands of a King are the hands of a Healer. And he, alongside the Istari Mithrandir, did labour long into the night until he was exhausted and could labour no more. _

Aragorn, floating slightly with sheer fatigue, moved through the stricken who crowded the Halls of Healing, aware as if in a dream of the cries and beseeching on all sides for the healing touch of the King.

_Three battles… summoning the King of the Dead… a forced march…rallying the peoples of the coast…some chance to rest while sailing north up the Anduin, but who rests with a battle to come?. And now this. I need sleep, but I cannot forsake my people!_

He automatically knelt at the side of a soldier whose gut had been torn by an Orc's cleaver. He smelt putrefaction, setting in already. As so many times before, he cleared his mind and prayed for Nienna, the healer of the Valar, to use him as her vessel. He heard voices in the distance: the garrulous little woman who had found him the Kingsfoil, and one other, with a curious speech impediment:

_It takes them this way sometimes, with the shock of it. He won't let go of that arm he had chopped off! Poor ignorant wight, he seems to think we can sew it back on again!_

_Ith that THO? Let me look… hmmmn, clean cut. . Path me my equipment boxth? Tholdier, thith could be your lucky DAY!_

_Look! She's threading a needle! I don't believe this! Are you SURE you're a healer? _

_(long pause) So, well, the blood's flowing back into the arm and it's the right shade of pink, but that don't prove a thing!_

_Jutht flexth the fingerth for me, soldier? OK, that'll do. Take it easy on that arm for three or four dayth before you thtart thwinging a thword again, OK? _

Aragorn heard Mithrandir laugh, low and delighted.

"It would appear Nienna has answered you, Aragorn. You're not the only miracle worker here tonight!"

Igorina moves among the casualties, assessing them and sorting them in terms of triage, as she has been taught.

When the number of casualties exceeds the number of Igors available to help, you must make a value judgement as to where your skills are best deployed. Those who are quiet and content and whose wounds are light – no treatment, as it is likely they will heal normally without intervention. Those who are quiet because their wounds are most severe, who are more than halfway given over to Death – no treatment over and above securing their immediate comfort, as regardless of what you do and what time you expend, they are going to die anyway and your effort is wasted.

Those in the middle group – the ones whose wounds are severe enough to need intervention and who have a good chance of survival if treated – do everything you can for them.

Igorina regretfully passed up a soldier with a ravaged gut. He will die soon. She sensed this society would not tolerate what an Igor could have done with twenty feet of undamaged intestine, rescued from a cooling corpse. These Gondorians shared something with old-time Omnians back home… and she'd had to be so careful. Out on the field with Captain Turin's company, she'd found a useful arm that could be rescued to a Gondorian soldier who'd lost a limb. It had caused a moment's consternation, as for some reason the idea of a green-black … Eric's?.... arm attached to a pink-brown human had appalled and consternated. She shrugged. Maybe that was just an aesthetic consideration: she'd just have to make sure the colour matched.

_I need an astringent, an antitheptic, and an anelgethic. What do you have?_

_A what? I don't know any of them, m'lady!_

_Thomething to clean and dry a wound. Thomething to keep it more than jutht normally clean, tho the bacteria… Mordor's curse, like tiny tiny dirty biting creatureth – are kept at bay. And thomething to eathe the pain and the itching around thitcheth and thcars, when they thtart to form._

_Oh, _kingsfoil_ does all that! It's a healing herb, m'lady. _

_Fetch some! _

"I have kingsfoil, Lady Healer"

Igorina looked around. A grave, tall, elderly man in grey-white robes that somehow gave off a subdued white radiance. (Hmm, one of the first spells Unseen University teaches in the Sales and Marketing course: self-illumination. Looking the part of a Wizard. Which places this chap, she thought. Hope he's more mentally stable than ours.) And a Man, looking to Igorina's jaundiced eyes like Standard Issue Hero Number One. _This one won't be content with a salaried pensionable job in the City Watch,_ she thought.

The Hero held out a leather bag containing plant matter. With a word of thanks, Igorina touched some to her lips, than chewed a leaf thoughtfully.

_Bitter. Astringent. Hmm, definite analgesic qualities! Also likely to be antiseptic. I can use this!_

"We need to make poultices of this, if it's all we have. Spread it around the maximum number of people" said the Hero.

"I agree" Igorina replied. "Doeth it grow near here? We need more!"

"Search parties will be sent out at first light" the Wizard assured her.

"My Lady, you present something of a puzzle. Captain Turin reported that you appeared on the field, fighting for the West, and cast down one of the last Vampires left over from the First Age of the World, a lesser creature of the Dark Lord's own kin. You were modest about your great deed of valour, saying that you deal with rogue vampires every day!"

"A rogue vampire. Thingular"

"Be that as it may. Only one other on this field, and she also a woman, surpassed that deed in valour!"

"She lies nearby, Lord" said a follower in the entourage. "With the Lord Faramir and the Halfling"

"Then we see what may be done." said the Hero. "Lady Healer, I sense integrity and goodness about you. Will you walk with us?"

"Gladly." said Igorina.

She stood, un-noticed in the background, as Aragorn and Gandalf moved between the three beds and conferred. Snatches of whispered dialogue reached her. _Great hurt… in daring to touch that accursed thing… her arm may be withered…_She looked into the face of the golden-haired woman on the bed: something made her think of the werewolf sergeant from Ankh-Morpork that she had met. The semblance to Angua was really quite uncanny. She tugged at the wizard's sleeve.

"May I? Thome thingth may be…eathier… if they are done while she ith unconthiouth"

She saw the wizard deciphering her words, and then he nodded. The hero nodded too.

Igorina took the woman's shattered sword arm, with care.

"A therious compound fracture. It will need re-athembly. My toolth, pleathe? Perhaps while I rethet her arm, you could look at the otherth?"

Igorina worked deftly, explaining what she was doing to the Healers who watched.

"Therious trauma, as if the thing she hit had great thize and mass beyond its apparent thize. It would have been like theveral tons of troll dropped on her thword arm. But I can rebuild it where it ith broken, and where the bone hath been crushed, I have thalves to promote regrowth. Thir, will you hold her hand just so while I… ah, that brings the bone ends into alignment. Now I can pin them together. Hand-drill? Screwdriver, please? Do you have dwarfs on this world? This metal I am using is not normal thteel, as that would inevitably rutht and poithon the patient. There ith a Dwarf nearby with metalworking thkills? Take him a little of thith. It ith called by uth _Titanium_. Your Dwarf can then thupply your Healers. It will hold the arm together while fresh bone grows around it. If I cut the rod to thize, and inthert it justht _so_, she will carry minimal scars. For a male patient, thcar tithue is a sign of manlineth. All a bit too _machithmo _to me! I dson't know about you, but a woman is happier if she carries fewer thcars.."

At last she had rebuilt Eowyn's sword-arm.

"Get titanium rod and thcrews from your Dwarfth" she reccomended. Now you've seen me do one, you can do others!"

Aragorn and Mithrandir returned.

"Lady Healer, you have done well!" the Hero marvelled.

"Give her at least ten days before she utheth that arm again" Igorina counseled.

She then stood back as Aragorn crushed the kingsfoil in a bowl under Eowyn's nose and added warm water.

"Lady Eowyn, awake! For too long have you walked in the shadows…"

Igorina, her job done, stepped back into the shadow. _You can also use that kingsfoil stuff as a pleasantly scented smelling salt_, she marvelled. _I must bring some back to the Discworld with me!_

Mithrandir patted her arm and looked down with a grateful smile. It was a smile a maiden could be safe with, a wise, knowing smile.

"I see you are not of this Middle-Earth. We'll have to see about getting you home. In recompense for what you did here, is there any gift at all that we may send you home with?"

"well…" Igorina mused, "The firtht is thith _kingthfoil_. It ith unknown on my world, and something with that many healing applicationth…"

The wizard nodded.

"And.. do you have something called _coffee_?"

Blank looks all round. Igorina carefully described what she was looking for. A knight in Aragor's retinue cleared his throat and said "My lord, we took quantities of such a powder from human prisoners from Far Harad and the deep South. They claim it is a refreshing invigorating drink, but we trusted them not and left it untouched. There is much more in their baggage train that we despoiled. Even now, the bounty of captured goods is being inventoried!"

Mithrandir lit a thoughtful pipe.

"Then why not try it, as our trusted friend here also says it is a refreshing and invigorating drink?"

"And _far_ better for you than that thtuff!"

Coffee, both powder and bean, was produced. Igorina then gave a demonstration of how it was prepared, and drank the first cup to demonstrate it had no ill-effects.

"My lord Aragorn, you have not slept properly for three days. You have fought three battles and force-marched through the Place of the Dead. If this spice has the restorative effect our Lady Healer claims, it would show most on you."

Aragorn tentatively lifted a steaming cup to his mouth, and sipped.

The effect was immediate. He looked at the world through new and wide-awake eyes and said

"Gandalf! I've just had this really good idea! Let's get the army together and march on Mordor! Why wait? Let's do it now!"

The wizard chuckled. "Peace, my friend! We'll discuss that in the morning. Less haste!"

Eomer, king of Rohan, tipped his cup back and said "Damn good idea. Get stuck into these Orcs. Slay the lot of 'em!"

"It hath thith effect the firtht time" Igorina whispered to Gandalf.

"So I see" the wizard answered, drily.

* * *

The Detail dug in and posted guards, awaiting and hoping for Igorina' return from elsewhere in time and space. Polly just had to hope it would be sooner rather than later. They fixed field billets, doss-bags and groundsheets where they could for warmth and concealment and spent a relatively comfortable night. At least it wasn't raining.

"She will return" Wazzer Goom said, confidently. "The Duchess has assured me that She knows of Igorina's plight and is commanding the assistance of Others."

There was something in the way Wazzer had said "Others", with a capital letter…

"Does the Duchess know where she is?" Polly asked.

"Igorina has been transported to another world and has faced perils there. She has also found friends. A Wizard is involved and is seeking to return her."

"Oh, bloody hell, _wizards_!" muttered Tonker. "And they're _helping_. As if we didn't have enough to worry about!"

"Second most dangerous thing in the world" agreed Lofty. "After an officer with a map in his hand who thinks he knows where he's going. A wizard who thinks he knows what he's doing!"

"This is a different Wizard" said Wazzer. "Not one of the bumbling fat old men from Unseen University. One who really _does_ know what he's doing."

"We'll see" grunted Tonker. "Poor bloody Igorina!"

__________________________________________________

More of the new _cor-fee_ was served at the Council the next morning.

Igorina had had a comfortable night's sleep in a curtained alcove at the Houses of Healing. She sat, inconspicuously at the back of the gathering alongside the Halfling in the green-and-gold livery, while the Lords of the West debated grand strategy.

Gandalf ensured that an assembly of battle-tired men received ample supplies of the invigorative and restorative drink called _cor-fee, _and this was gratefully received. Igorina didn't fully comprehend the sit-rep, but she gathered the Western Alliance had infiltrated a couple of deep-penetration agents behind enemy lines, on a desperate mission to destroy some sort of power-base crucial to the enemy's war effort: this was code-named _The Ring. _

The wizard proposed a simple strategy to divert the enemy's attention away from his rear echelon, where the current intelligence reports placed the deep-penetration team from Special Forces. To give them a clear run at the target, the Armies of the Western Alliance were to make an all-or-nothing charge against the Enemy's western order, to draw his entire armies out for one final pitched battle outside his Citadel.

This Operation Citadel1 could only have one result: the Western Armies were nowhere near strong enough to break through defensive line after defensive line and assail the enemy's capital. This was a death-or-glory march, a Final Battle, one where in normal circumstances the only reward would be death and a moral victory for being on the right side, even though the Enemy win, and Darkness cover the land.

_He sounds just like Lord Rust_, thought Igorina. _But these kings and princes and captains aren't just lapping it up, they're cheering!_

Including the Halfling beside her, who was alternately quaffing his coffee, stamping, and cheering.

"Isn't it glorious, mistress?" he exclaimed to Igorina. Igorina, who'd seen the human fall-out from glorious offensives led by charismatic leaders, muttered something non-committal. "And there's something about this _cor-fee_ stuff. I wonder if the beans can be made to grow in the Shire?"

Gandalf went on: Yet we must be prepared to sacrifice our own lives, that the _Ringbearers _be given time to complete their mission. They are the West's s0ole chance of victory!

Again, Igorina wondered what the Ring was. She'd heard talk from Army alchemists about one of Leonard of Quirm's ideas, to employ a rare explosive metal to produce an explosion of such impact that it reduced an entire mountain to rubble. They'd thought if it worked, it could be a great way of creating that military road over the mountains – just take away the mountains. Igorina had had a vision of a similar bomb being exploded in a city and and had gone "ugggh". _Not even any spare parts left to harvest. Then again, nobody left alive to sew them onto, so it balances. _

Was this Ring such a weapon, made small enough to be carried by one man?

With much cheering, the lords and captains opted for Gandalf's plan to charge the Dark Empire with everything they had, leaving nothing to defend Rohan and Minas Tirith on the grounds there'd be really no point if the War was lost. Igorina noted as they streamed out, filled with purpose and vitality, all of them had caffeine-bright slightly manic eyes reminding her of Mal.

Gandalf strolled over to her, rubbing his hands together with satisfaction.

"Normally getting them to agree on anything is like trying to herd cats" he mused. "But your wonderful _cor-fee_ focused their minds wonderfully! Thank you, Lady Healer. Now shall we see about getting you home? I have the kingsfoil you requested. And we can spare you a sack of Haradrim coffee, I think, for your friend who poses the…complications… when she's denied."

He turned.

"Lord Aragorn! May I beg use of the palantír?"

"With my blessing, Mithrandir!"

"Sit with me, Lady. Now this has been wrested from the control of the Dark Lord, it's perfectly safe."

They looked into the dark heart of the globe together.

"This is a _palantír. _It sees into all times and all spaces. And all possible worlds"

"Oh, like an omniscope, you mean?" Igorina asked.

"You have them on your world? This makes things easier. Good. Let me put my strength into it. You touch the surface lightly, so it knows you and your need…good…"

Together they saw Great A'Tuin swim across the stars, its attendant elephants supporting the flat Disc. Igorina, seeing her home planet from outside for the first time, was entranced. Gandalf was delighted.

"Often have we speculated on other worlds and other models to construct a world to" he said. "Our philosophers wondered about the turtle and the elephants. Now we know it to be true! Middle-Earth was a flat world, in its beginnings. But it had no elephants nor Turtle, it stood alone in the void."

"Wath?" questioned Igorina.

"In the Second Age, when the human kingdom of Atalante-Numenor (2) fell into sin and was destroyed, the Valar, in their wisdom and mercy, rebuilt the world as a sphere. I have to confess I don't completely understand it myself, to be honest!"

The view into the palantír then zoomed down through the clouds above the disc and down onto the Disc itself, with dizzying speed.

Igorina sat up with excitement.

"The Detail!"

Polly, Maladict, Wazzer and the rest, still occupying the position they'd been in when the flashsides had flipped her out.

"humans" mused Gandalf. "A… vampire? A TROLL?"

"ELF!" screamed Igorina. "ELVES!"

Her hands dived to her pack and came up clutching her weapon of last resort, a small powerful horse crossbow.

Legolas and the sons of Elrond stopped short. The woodland elf raised a hand in the universal sign of "peace"

"Good day, Gandalf. We wished to speak to the healing mistress from a far world. But something ails her?"

"It ailth me that you're bloody ELVES!" she shrieked.

"Interesting" Gandalf mused. "She is of the Light, yet two she accounts friends are a Troll and a Vampire. And she cannot bide the presence of the elder folk?"

"Have you _theen_ the Elves on my world? _Nobody_ can bide their presence!" She pointed the crossbow at Legolas. "I warn you, thethe boltth are tipped with thteel! That'th mainly iron with a bit of carbon in it!"

Legolas tapped the steel of his belt-knife perplexedly.

"Why does she think we should fear iron?"

Gandalf closed his eyes in thought, and reached out with his mind.

Igorina felt herself lowering the bow. Legolas stepped forwards. She flinched as he touched her shoulder. She felt the voice of the elf inside her head.

_Please. I wish you no harm. May I find out why you hate Elves so? _Legolas gently probed her thoughts, and exhaled.

"Ah." He said.

_I apologise for the intrusion. Please believe we are not like those elves._

"I saw what you saw." said Gandalf.

"The giggling ones. The insane ones." said a son of Elrond. "Those are the elves she knows in her world."

"Igorina, daughter of Igor, of the House of Igor. Hearken."

_In the dawn of our world, the Creator placed elves to awaken by Cuivienen, the long-lost birthplace of our people. But the first to notice the awakening of the elves was Melkor the Enemy, who took and captured many of the Dawn-Elves, and by cruelty and torment warped them into the first mothers and fathers of the filthy Goblin race we know as Orcs. _

_There were others whose bodies could not be altered greatly, but who under the torment suffered a shattering of the mind. They were useless to Melkor, but were still Elven enough to look as they should but their minds, still newborn, had been destroyed. Knowing only pain and delight in inflicting pain, Melkor cast them out from Middle-Earth and they fell into the void between worlds. Evidently they came to your world and your people fought terrifying wars with them. We cqll them the Simperi, the Giggling Ones. And yes, we kill them too if we encounter them. It is a kindness. They cannot grow or evolve. They can only destroy and unmake._

"And this also explains why you may be friends, on your world, with a Troll and a Vampire", Gandalf mused. "On your world, no Melkor nor Sauron arose to corrupt minds and draw creatures to him. There, a Vampire or a Troll is just another… person. Free to grow as they will according to their nature, with no Darkness to seduce them. This is interesting. I'd like to explore this further. My friends, will you bend your will with mine in returning our friend to her friends? I sensed there is a great bond of fellowship and they miss her, as she misses them."

"Gladly" said Legolas with a ready smile. Igorina reddened and shuffled her feet.

"You weren't to know" the elf said, kindly. "I'm sorry you only ever saw the dregs of my race before."

They bent to the palantír.

"Something's happening" said Legolas.

Letters were beginning to form.

**Welcome to the Homepage of**

**Unseen University**

**The premiyere college of Magic in the Discworld!**

And in smaller letters:

_To access Websyte, clickke ENTER._

_By clicking ENTER you are confirming that you are not_

_An Auditor of reality_

_An Elf_

_Something nasty from the Dungeon Dimensions_

_Sauron of the Red Eye, who hath been told to **BUGGER OFF**! on prior occasion._

_In which cayse, anti-viral software will be employed to your detriment._

"click "Enter" " urged Igorina.

**Page loading+++ Page loading+++Page loading**

**Stats counter: you are the 000001****st**** visitor to this site**

**This page brought to you by UU Macrosoft , and is compatible with most thinking engines/omniscopes/** **palantírs/Gloopers/scrying stones and crystal balls capable of connecting to the Multiverse-Wide –Web.**

The picture of a turning hourglass disappeared, and was replaced with one of a teddy bear.

++ MY NAME IS HEX ++ HOW MAY I HELP YOU? ++

Are there any wizards there?"

++APART FROM ME? ++ THE HUMAN WIZARDS ARE ALL AT HIGH DINNER. NOBODY WILL BE AVAILABLE FOR AT LEAST THREE HOURS++

Gandalf explained the situation, and HEX considered.

++ YES, I CAN RETURN HER ++ IT'S QUITE STRAIGHTFORWARD, REALLY ++.

"Excellent!" said Gandalf.

Legolas cleared his throat.

"HEX?"

++ I HEAR YOU++

"How does our war with Sauron go? Do you have any advice for us?"

++YOUR SIDE WINS.++ Hex said, off-handedly. ++I CANNOT SAY HOW BECAUSE OF CAUSALITY AND PARADOX++

++JUST ASK IGORINA TO STAND THERE. I WILL ACTIVATE TRANSFER IN ONE MINUTE.++

Igorina said her goodbyes. Gandalf asked:

"This multiverse-wide-web thing. Can Saurin access it?"

++NO ++ HE LOST HIS USER PRIVILEGES.++

"How?"

++ SOME OF THE ORCS IN BARAD-DUR TRIED TO USE THE PALANTÍR TO ACCESS ORC PORNOGRAPHY++ THEY ARE CURRENTLY DANGLING FROM AN UPPER PALLISADE BY THIN LENGTHS OF PIANO WIRE ATTACHED TO THEIR GENITALS++

"Ouch! Punishment?"

++RECREATION, I BELIEVE. MR GANDALF?++ JUST ONE QUESTION FOR YOU. IF, AFTER SUCCESSFUL COMPLETION OF THEIR MISSION, FRODO AND SAM ARE EXTRACTED FROM MORDOR BY THE EAGLES, AND HALF AN HOUR LATER ARE IN THE CARE OF THE KING++

"Yes" said Gandalf, doubtfully

++THEN WHY DID YOU SEND THEM IN ON FOOT TO SLOG IT THROUGH MORDOR FOR NEARLY FOUR WEEKS++ WHEN LOGICALLY THE EAGLES COULD HAVE INFILTRATED THEM DIRECT TO THE MOUNTAIN OF FIRE, WITH LESS CHANCE OF THE MISSION BEING INTERCEPTED? ++

At that point contact was made and Igorina dropped out of Middle-Earth; simultaneously the link between palantír and omniscope was broken.

Igorina was welcomed back to the Detail with cheers and backslaps. She nursed the precious potted plants furiously. She then tossed Maladict a sack of coffee:

"that ith probably the only coffee of itth kind on the Dithc right now. Apprethiaste it!"

She stomped of to find somewhere to sleep, saying "Later!" to requests to tell them where she'd been.

Meanwhile, Gandalf was slapping his brow in frustration.

"Get the Eagles to ferry them in. Get the bloody Eagles to ferry them in. I never thought of that!"

"You can't be expected to think of everything" Legolas said, loyally.

1 Operation Zitadelle (Citadel) in July 1943 was Germany's last-chance offensive in Russia, aimed at shattering the Red Army line and resuming the drive on Moscow. It failed utterly, and the Germans lost the combat initiative in the East forever, having lost a major army, and beginning the series of retreats that took the war to Berlin in April 1945. Around the time the doomed Citadelle was being planned, Hitler was doubling his intake of stimulant drugs, as well as his usual intake of hot strong coffee…

2 Tolkein gives the drowned island of Numenor an alternative name of _Atalante_ in the small print , and coyly hints that the destruction of the island and remaking of the world was so terrible that echoes of the memory still remain in the recesses of human memory… but then, you know your Tolkein or you wouldn't be reading this.


End file.
